The Microsoft Outlook Add-In is optionally installed with the regular PhraseExpress program installation and can extract from the email currently selected in the Outlook inbox:

• Emails sender's first and last name, title, the gender and email address
• Recipient's email address
• The email subject
• Body text of the email

This information can be used with additional macro functions to create powerful functions:

• Reply with a custom email template depending on any of above extracted information.
• Reply with a personalized saluation with the sender's name.
• Automatically show phrases depending on the body text contents. E.g. Show sales related phrases if the email asks for marketing information.

The Add-In can solely extract this data from the currently selected email in the inbox.

The title and name are extracted by analyzing the email body and works best for business emails with standardized layout. Gender is detected based on a first name database. Both is not 100% accurate.

PhraseExpress supports the DeepL online translation service to translate any provided text into a specified language.

Video tutorial

If no source language is specified, the translation algorithm analyzes the text to determine the language of the provided text.

In most cases, you probably nest macros into the source text input box, e.g. to insert the current clipboard content or to insert a variable.

Video Demo

• DeepL Configuration
• Phrase translation

Video Demo and Tutorial

PhraseExpress integrates the OpenAI text processing technology as a macro function:

In the macro dialog, you can define the input that is sent to OpenAI and the instruction in natural language how OpenAI shall process the text:

The gear icon allows you to fine-tune OpenAI related parameters. For more information and support refer to the OpenAI documentation.

You may want to lower the "Temperature" value to keep result close to the instruction and adapt "Max Token" to the sum of the text input plus the expected text reply.

The real power comes with combining the OpenAI macro with other PhraseExpress macro functions. Right-click into any input box and select the desired macro function from the popup to insert it within the OpenAI macro.

You can leave the input empty and just prompt OpenAI to generate any text, e.g. "write a random cookie recipe".

• Setting up OpenAI in PhraseExpress
• Using OpenAI within PhraseExpress

This macro function inserts the entire content of the specified file into the phrase.

Supported file types:

This macro require a local Microsoft Word installation.

• Insert file

This macro function copies the contents of the specified file into the clipboard and pastes the clipboard into the target application when inserting the phrase, that contains this macro function.

Microsoft Word or Excel files require a local installation of Microsoft Word or Excel.

• Embed file contents

This macro function inserts a specified range of cells of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Video tutorial

You can define a range of cells by their start and end row/column coordinates. Multiple cells can optionally be separated with a separator text.

PhraseExpress uses column numbers instead of letter coordinates (so called "R1C1 reference style") to allow you to calculate cell coordinates with the calculation macro function.

To insert the entire spreadsheet instead of a range of cells, use this macro function.

This macro function requires a local Microsoft Excel installation.

This macro function inserts a specified values of a CSV file ("comma separated values).

You can define a range of values by their start and end row/column coordinates (starting with 1). Multiple cells can optionally be separated with a separator text.

This macro function inserts a XML file value, addressed by its xpath value (see Wikipedia).

This macro function can be used as a data bridge to external databases which can create an XML file.

PhraseExpress accepts files and URLs of XML files stored on a web server.

Name spaces are not supported for xpath qeuries.

This macro connects to a SQL or Microsoft Access database and outputs the specified query:

This macro function is used to extract data from a database source which is inserted within the phrase where the macro is used. To import an entire database as phrases into PhraseExpress, check out the database import feature instead.

This macro function inserts the specified Windows environment variable (see Wikipedia).

You can choose any from the default or custom environment variables.

This macro function inserts the specified LDAP variable into the phrase.

This macro is useful e.g. for email signatures which are dynamically filled by the ActiveDirectory variables.

The Microsoft ActiveDirectory server must be installed and accessible locally.